National Indigenous People’s day 2025

As many of you have probably figured out, I am really good at talking.   I love a good tangent and if we start in on a topic that I am fond of …say gardening…I’m gone for good.  Another topic I love to speak of  is that of the Strong women in my family.  I can tell endless stories that have been passed down the generations about the women in my family who owned property before most, who farmed and fought and took no nonsense.  About my grandma who fought of a bear with a frying pan.  I love that story.  About my own mother who was told her epilepsy would restrict life and make her unable to accomplish anything…and then traveled Europe, went skydiving, had a family and was as stubborn as I am … or rather I am as stubborn as she is.  Not to mention the strong, socialist, compassionate and loud women of the North End who changed the city against all odds. 

These stories created me.  Stories of the lives which my grandparents and great grandparents lived told me who I should be and how I should live.  They told me what my family expected of me and how I should respond in times of trouble.

Scripture does the same thing.  It tells us the story of who we are as a people of God and how we should live.  It tells us how to respond in times of trial and in times of thanksgiving.  The stories of those people thousands of years ago, inform us now. Phillipians says “Keep on doing the things that you have learned and received and heard and seen in me, and the God of peace will be with you.”   Now of course, this is referring to the law of the Lord and the good lessons that we have inherited from our spiritual ancestors, but we can also inherit bad lessons too.

There are untold generations of people like my grandfathers who had it beaten into them that ‘real men’ behave in certain ways.  That no matter what your natural inclination, men do one thing and women do another.  So real men don’t cry and a real lady doesn’t know how to fix cars….and if you do; then you have to hide it.

Our family stories and our cultural stories tell us what our identity is supposed to be; and those who fight against the norm, at the very least have a real hard road ahead.   In most cases we become what is expected of us in many, many ways.

So, what if you want to change that story? 

We have seen the Me Too movement and a surge of women and girls, stand up and say that the cultural story of ‘boys will be boys’ or ‘he bullies you because he likes you’ is not acceptable.  However, to enact change those stories had to be told and they had to be heard.  The upsetting stories of workplace harassment, of how dressing modestly didn’t change the chance of being attacked, how domestic violence was ignored as a family matter, of how drunkenness is seen as an acceptable excuse for anything in men and as an invitation for violence in women.

We hear these stories and we begin to understand how they have had a negative impact on generations of people, our own people, our families and we are recognising that we need to change the narrative.  Create new stories to form new identities and new expectations in our own lives in in our cultural identity.

But when we hear the stories of Residential schools…some people still roll their eyes…’oh, not that again’.  When we speak of reconciliation…people say ‘I’m fine I have nothing against them’.   When we speak of sexual and physical abuse from churches and priests… we get our guards up and object that it didn’t happen everywhere.  When these stories are told, we stop listening, and quip why can’t they ‘just get over it already.’  Then we go back to living our lives in the shadow of the stories of our own ancestors. 

 I know that I just can’t get over living out my history.  Can you possibly imagine me, living my life submissive, quiet, always colouring in the lines.   Neither can I! I am a product of my past, as well as growing into my future.  I just happen to be white, and a part of the culture of privilege.  That story that says I can be anything, if I work hard enough.

For generations of many indigenous people the ongoing narrative was one that was far less positive.  If it is your parents and grandparents who form the bones of your identity, who tell you the stories of who you are and what is expected of you and they aren’t there…where do you learn from.  You learn from those who are there. 

The stories you hear are the stories that form you.  Indigenous people for generations have heard the hateful and dismissive stories of ‘you are not worth anything’, ‘you are savage’, ‘you are lazy, drunk, unemployable and untrustworthy’.   That is the story that was told to great grandparents, grandparents, parents and children…and after growing up with that horrific story informing who you were…if they finally got to go home, yearning for homecoming and peace…even love or acceptance…too often the stories became ‘we don’t know you anymore’. 

 Identity, comes from story…and the story became ‘ you are no good here’ and ‘unknown there’… you don’t fit anywhere.  You are unknown, no one.


It is only in this last generation or so that people are recognizing not only how horrific that history is, but also how such stories formed the people in them.  

If we want to change who we are then we need to change the story, but to do that we need to know what the story is.  You cannot change the story of how money and power can protect the rich, and pretend the Epstein files don’t exist.  To change the story, the story must be known…declared and seen for what it is.  For a person to change their story they need to speak their story… and if we refuse to listen…then we are saying that we don’t want to see change.  If we do not listen and hear the stories of the TRC and of those we meet, then we are reenforcing the culture of ‘your story, you, don’t matter.’

There is no ‘getting over it’, our stories form our identities.  To understand someone is to know their story and that goes for cultures as well as people.  Canadian culture created a story about who Indigenous people are and we are still formed by that story.  

Think about it, if someone asks about your heritage you are going to be specific…even I would answer Scotch/Irish even though my family has been in Canada for generations.    However, if we are asked about someone who looks Indigenous, we are content saying they are Indigenous. It is as if we think all Indigenous people are the same.  As if there were not some 630 Indigenous communities in Canada, over 50 nations, over 50 languages.  And I know that those who are Scottish don’t want to be mistaken for Irish…. Or Austrian for German …or Australian for New Zealand.  We aren’t happy being referred to as generically ‘white’.   Yet, Canadian Culture created a story that said who you are doesn’t matter, your people and your history doesn’t matter.

Which means we need to change the story.  People from all nations across Canada are working to reclaim their identity, to learn the old stories and to tell new ones.  To speak languages, reclaim arts, tell stories that will create a new and more authentic identity for many Indigenous peoples from all over Canada.

And we, as people who have inherited the Canadian Cultural story of and I use historical terms here,  ‘What is an Indian’, need to hear that story so that we can write new stories and create a new identity of learning ‘who is our sister’.   That is reconciliation.  To know the stories, in all their brutal truth and see how they have formed identity and culture and then create a new chapter.  In which we listen to the stories forming around us, and ensure this next chapter becomes a positive part of the story of Canada.

Those stories are growing now.  The stories of The Anglican Church of Canada’s Sacred Circle.   The stories of Epiphany Indigenous Church.  The story of Self-Determination in the Council of the North.  The stories of our brothers and sister in Christ and the stories of the Treaty One people and how we can grow together into a new chapter of that story.

It has been said that throughout all of history, since the beginning of creation, there has been just one stories with an infinite number of chapters.  We are still living that story, we are a part of that story …together…and how we live, believe, behave, creates stories that form all of our identity.

The stories we tell of Jesus are stories of forgiveness, of love, of inclusivity and of community.  This is our identity as Christians, but not all chapters of the Christian story have reflected that identity.  Each day that we live we make choices, the stories that formed us influence how we make those choices.  Each day we write a new chapter to the story of Canada, the story of Christianity and the story of us.

So, today I ask you, What will your story be and how will it create your identity and influence the people and culture around you?